The World Health Organization has launched its guidance for mental health policy and strategic action plans. The guidance aims for deinstitutionalisation, tackling stigma and discrimination, eliminate coercion and abuse and uphold legal capacity and decision-making rights.
At the launch event, it WHO underlined that on the global scale, mental health is largely underfunded and not adapted to the mental health needs of most people. It is still being stigmatised and people with mental health issues end up too often in institutions.
The guidance calls for tailored policies on mental health for different groups, including also older adults. It emphasises, for example, the importance of supporting companionship schemes to maintain social connections and maintain an active lifestyle, and the possibility to support schemes that help in establishing advanced directives for care and support regarding older persons, and the need for providing supported decision-making rather than removing legal capacity of older persons with mental health needs.
The guidance warns of the risks of overmedication and oversedation, especially in care homes and hospital settings, and to consider physical comorbditiies that can be a barrier to access mental health care. It stresses the importance of preventing abuse, the importance of coordinating different care services. Specific services should be developed for older persons, such as memory clinics, services addressing late-life depression and palliative care. It further calls for training of care professionals to identify risks of suicidality, especially with older people facing social isolation, chronic illness or bereavement, and it also underlines the importance of fostering social connection and providing for spaces accessible with disabilities at home and in the community.
